Western Digital develops digital storage devices for automotive industry
The California-based Western Digital Corporation (WDC), an innovator in the storage industry, has developed speciallytested products which are certified to automotive industry standards like 3D NAND flash, G-Technology, HGST and SanDisk. WDC develops and manufactures storage solutions that enables industries to create, manage, experience and preserve digital content. Its products are marketed under 4 brands: G-Technology, HGST, SanDisk, and WD.
In the overall digital data storage market in the world, automotive is still a small part. Because of the huge transformation in the auto industry, it is more ‘connected’ with the outside world and the need for storage is growing.
Vivek Tyagi, Director, India Business Development, SanDisk Commercial Sales and Support, Western Digital Corporation, said “we are seriously looking at automotive market. We develop storage devices for larger operations. We continue to develop more products for the automotive sector in the coming years. We offer encrypted drives for the safe and secure storage. We build flash memory-based products which are bundled with the controller or a processor inside that manages the flash to read, write and error correction. This software runs on the same controller
which is integrated.” “The entire ecosystem around the car is changing. With all the technologies like connected cars, vehicle-vehicle communication, they will have to handle more data storage. First, it needs more storage space. Secondly, it requires faster procession capability at the edge (inside the car). So, the future products will be based on 3D NAND Flash which is highly reliable in terms of endurance. To enhance the capacity and reliability of the flash, the technology is being used to manufacture in 3D. Earlier, the chips were made on 2D which means if you want to make a bigger chip, then you have to enhance the X and Y dimensions. 3D NAND helps to store more data and puts it one on the top of the other all the way up to 64 layers. So, that’s why we manufacture 3D technology for the automotive industry. There are many applications which the car companies integrate inside the car to provide security solutions to the customer. We are limited to implementing security at the chip level,” he said.
“We are working with all the leading OEMs in the world. Our flash storage goes into either the car telematics navigation or infotainment system which need to store either the media files or the maps for the navigation devices. We provide solutions at different levels. Many companies build embedded electronics system for the cars. One level of storage comes in the form of a chip or semi-conductor storage device that integrated the processor inside
the system. Its features include security built-in, health monitoring of device etc. The second level of storage we provide is removable storage solutions like SD card or micro SD card. These are designed for different standards and different levels of intelligence where one can write and erase data several times,” Tyagi said.
WDC brings in innovative technologies like G-Technology, HGST and SanDisk storage products for the automotive industry. In many countries, they install ‘dashcam’ to eliminate disputes among customers and insurance companies for claims after an accident. Dashcam is a highresolution video camera fitted in the dashboard, facing the road. It constantly records the video of the car movement and needs more storage space. WDC makes special grade video storage SD cards and micro SD cards.
G-Technology’s roots are deeply ingrained in delivering premium storage solutions for audio/video production, photography and the professional content creation market. From storing, transferring, editing and distributing content, G-Technology makes the workflow simpler, better and faster. G-Technology’s high-performance portable and desktop drives, flexible transfer/edit solutions and fast RAID systems are built for professional content creation environments where performance and reliability are paramount. Because G-Technology holds itself to the highest standards, its products can be found in premier post-production facilities worldwide.
HGST helps the world harness the power of data. It provides smarter storage solutions that power the markets and companies that shape lives—enabling possibilities for the cloud, enterprise and sophisticated infrastructure everywhere.
SanDisk offers trusted and innovative flash storage products that have transformed the electronics industry. SanDisk’s quality, state-of-the-art solutions are at the heart of many of the world’s largest data centres, and embedded in advanced smartphones, tablets and PCs.
“Our customers are using larger and larger operating systems which we learn from them. The size of the operating system including boot code, security and many capabilities are growing. The basic flash memory to store the operating system needs to be larger and secured. Then, we like to implement some level of artificial intelligence to analyse the data on a real-time basis and in navigation, they like to implement 3D maps. Similarly, the instrument clusters were electro mechanical in the past. Now they think of attaching a 7- inch or 10inch LCD colour screen and also there is a concept of reconfigurable cluster to change the cluster into different colours in different modes. Again, it requires a large storage and hence there is a need for larger flash,” Tyagi said. The company provides a broad portfolio of offerings that cover 3 major categories: Data centre devices and solutions, client devices and client solutions. An increasing amount of data is being managed on HDD and SSD in a cloud environment and Western Digital Corporation plays an important role in providing secure storage products and solutions. The company addresses the rapidly changing landscape of the storage market through a broad range of storage technologies, product portfolios and a global reach to the industry.